Yesterday’s Northwest Arkansas Times had a story about Fayetteville Mayor Lioneld Jordan’s economic development team. The so-called “Fayetteville Forward Economic Accountability Council” was launched six months ago. You can tell this council is doing good work because acts that are accompanied by alliteration are always awesome. Now, I think the mayor’s done a fine job of running the city so far. Still, the to-do list of the Fayetteville Forward Economic Development Summit’s Priorities that was reprinted in the paper was pretty amusing. It lists all of the projects underway with the mayor bragging that “We’ve completed five of the eighteen projects.” But most of the accomplishments are little more than forming committees and declarations about future actions as opposed to any real accomplishments. Here’s the list for those of you who missed it:

First of all, you gotta love how “pending” sounds so much better than “nope.”

But my real point here is that this list looks more like political showmanship than anything else. I know Jordan is, in fact, a politician, and he is motivated to manipulate the public’s perception of him as best he can. At the same time, smart people read the newspaper, and I think many of them see all of the politico-jargon, such as work, identify, promote, establish, explore, and support, for what it really is–a whole lot of nothing. Most people see this political mumbo-jumbo like employers see puffed-up resumes. Still, to-do lists are important. Just take a look at the to-do list I used to write this blog-post:

With a list like this, everyone can see I’ve accomplished six of eight of my goals! I know it’s probably in Jordan’s best interest to pad his public perceptions with some puffed up press release (gotta love that alliteration!) that makes it sound like he’s getting things done. But I just can’t help wishing our politicians were a little more straightforward, kind of like this guy.